Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Google Finally Catches Up to BuildingLink! ;-)

In a day and age in which many individuals are literally attached to their keyboards for a large chunk of their day and every last second of their work week counts, most companies on the leading edge have been pulling out all of the stops to bring a better solution to the population’s efficiency needs. The going philosophy, if you’re a company who offers these types of solutions, is that if you can reduce a user’s work by even one key stroke, you’ve attained a major victory.

And with that in mind, it’s no surprise that some of the world’s most important and innovative companies are always trying to come up with something new to add to the fray. Last week, for example, in a bid to offer its users even better speed on their daily online activities, Google introduced a new functionality which suggests search queries matching whatever has been typed into its search field so far. The idea is that rather than forcing the user to type in the entire phrase of what they’re searching for, they need only enter a portion and allow the website to guess the rest and suggest accurate clickable results. Titled “Google Instant,” this advanced functionality has already been garnering a lot of positive feedback, forcing just about everyone, including us at BuildingLink, to take notice.

This got us thinking that a “BuildingLink Instant” feature might be just what was needed to enhance an already robust and user-friendly system. If only Front Desk users, for example, could have a convenient “Quick Search” field in the upper-left hand part of the screen which would enable them to quickly access any details needed to help better serve individual units, that might be a tremendous addition to the site for them. Or if the same types of fields could be available to assist staff members when documenting packages or entering permission-to-enter instructions to better keep track of security, that might add a lot of ease to their daily tasks. This might even be a great addition when staff members were looking to document building resources which could be reserved. Truly, the more we think about it, the more we can’t help but agree with Google. “Instant” results definitely make for happier users!

In fact, there’s only ONE thing keeping us from developing this type of feature for our users: the fact that we already came up with it and added it months ago!

Thank you to all of our users who continue to make requests for improvements to the site and who motivate and inspire us on a daily basis to do better. And thanks to any of you who may have pointed Google toward our “little” site for a little “Search Field 101”